Coil Confusion: XRP Micropayment Service Enters Beta with More Questions than Answers

2018-09-21

Coil, an app designed to tip XRP to websites and content creators, recently entered a closed beta. Since the beginning of the month, users have been able to pay Coil a $5 subscription fee to donate on their behalf.

The donation process is carried out via a browser extension that sends micropayments to various websites. The extension can also communicate with websites to give you exclusive content or an ad-free experience.

But although Coil has been active for almost three weeks, its subscribers are still unclear as to which sites are receiving donations.

Participating Websites

Coil was originally founded in May after its creator, Stefan Thomas, left his position as CTO of Ripple. However, it was not until a few weeks ago that Coil actually became active and began to donate to websites.

Since the platform is young, only a few websites interact with the tool: Coil’s official website identifies YouTube, the Internet Archive, Twitch, and Wikipedia as compatible websites.

But it’s not clear if these sites are fully integrated with Coil. For example, some users have reported that their Coil extension is not donating to Wikipedia. Furthermore, it’s not clear whether Coil’s recipients even know they are participating. As one Twitter user notes:

do we know if the the integration was done by the Wiki Foundation / their coders, or Coil with the browser plug that auto links to Wiki donations effectively without Wiki knowing anything about it?

Unfortunately, the sites that are eligible for donations have been entirely silent on the matter, and Coil has not explicitly said whether it is sending money via the sites’ built-in donation interfaces.

Coil’s FAQ simply indicates that the extension “allows [them] to donate to … sites like Wikipedia that accept donations.” Neither Wikipedia nor the Internet Archive have indicated whether they have claimed or received any funds.

It is clear, however, that YouTube channels and independent users must sign up for Coil to begin receiving donations. Independent website owners can also add code to their site in order to enable donations. Recipients must also communicate with an XRP tipbot on social media to receive tips.

In all, Coil is a promising platform, and it may quickly become a rival to Brave’s similar tipping system. However, Coil’s lack of communication is making it unclear how much enthusiasm there actually is for the project. Hopefully, in the future, Coil’s generosity will encourage a major platform to vocally partner with it.